Metro News & Reviews

A map of the subway route recommended by Metro staff. Click above for a larger map.

It’s a big day for the Westside Subway Extension project. Studies for the project have been underway since 2007 and today the Final Environmental Impact Statement/Report for the nine-mile extension of the subway to Westwood is being released as required by state and federal law.

The FEIS/R explains why the project is needed, shows where it will go and details how it will be built. The report also includes the Metro staff recommendations for a final route, including the exact location of the Century City and Westwood/UCLA and Westwood/VA stations — which had not been previously finalized.

In Century City, the station is proposed for Constellation and Avenue of the Stars. The Westwood/UCLA stop would be at Wilshire and Westwood boulevards and the Westwood/VA stop on the south side of Wilshire in the parking lot of the VA Hospital. The Metro Board of Directors is scheduled to consider approving the study — including the alignment and station locations — at their April 26th meeting.

If the project is built in three phases under Metro’s long-range plan, the estimated completion date of the first phase to La Cienega Boulevard is the year 2020. If federal funding is expanded by Congress and the project can be accelerated, the estimated date for building the entire subway to Westwood would be 2022.

Metro is also holding community open house meetings to help explain the document to the public. More details are in the following news release and I’ll post more on the new report soon:

Looks awesome, cannot wait to ride it. Alignment looks good and hits all the right areas. To think how far we have come, and probably be shocked at how far we will go in the next couple of decades. First, lets get it built!

Great, another Metro Rail line with a somewhat questionable terminus. So, what, if anything, do they plan to do after the end of the line at the VA? Should’ve tunneled north through Sepulveda Pass after Westwood to Sepulveda & Ventura in Sherman Oaks, over to Van Nuys BL all the way to at least Van Nuys Orange Line station, if not Van Nuys Metrolink instead of the VA. Wasted opportunity for a REAL Westside traffic congestion solution, as the VA terminus does absolutely nothing to alleviate the parking lot that is the nearby 405 on-ramp. Sure, it would’ve been insanely expensive, but, that’s the price to pay when you’re at least a quarter century behind where you should be in rail mass transit for a city of this size.